


Bathed In Fire

by ShrimpZilla



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 12:44:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4101442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShrimpZilla/pseuds/ShrimpZilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Capable likes the way Nux looks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bathed In Fire

**Author's Note:**

> written for kink meme.

“Is he white like that all over?”

“Better question: any more of those lumps?”

“Is he like Joe?” 

“Does he have hair anywhere?”

“He’s so small. Does that make it less scary?”

“He’s a War Boy. That’s scary enough, isn’t it?”

“Still a boy though. Young. What’s that like?”

“Can he even get it up sick as he is?”

Capable shushes them with a hiss. He can feel her moving next to him, glancing back to make sure he’s still asleep. He isn’t. Nux doesn’t sleep and when he does it’s light and feverish, edgy and ready to hit the floor running. But he keeps his eyes sealed tight as if he was sleeping easily, dreaming of things that aren’t Capable and her sister’s talking about him in quiet, laughing tones. He presses himself smaller into his corner of the cramped cab, desperate to escape Capable’s impending answers. He does not want to hear it because he already knows it. He knows his body, knows its looks and feels and smells. He knows he is scrawny and scarred and filled with illness. He does not want to hear how he sizes up next to the Immorten, does not want to hear that beside that god he is even weaker and more ineffectual than he might have thought, does not want to hear even worse that he is like him the same and Capable despises him just as strongly. 

Honest, honest Capable. She will tell them all the things of him that he had never wasted thoughts on. What do War Boys care of bodies not their own? They are all broken, all half-life. But Capable. The Wives. Even Furiosa and Blood Bag are not like him and they are all full and vibrant and made from things worth having. He is trash, junk, wretched. A sour, biting bile rises in the back of his throat. Spoiled Mother’s Milk and the old dust of the Immorten’s chrome. 

“Nux is—“ Capable’s voice cut off by a bang and overlaid with a scream, two, three, all the sisters crying out and dropping to hold each other down away from the windows. Nux is up, hand hovering over their heads and shoulders in a comfort he doesn’t quite no how to give. 

“Something busted,” he says and can’t hide the eagerness in his voice. The rig slows to a stop. Furiosa growling in the throat, sounding loud to Nux from where he sits behind her perched high on his knees, one arm braced against the curve of the roof. She must feel his sour breath pouring on her neck because she snaps him a look in the rearview and Nux is on his ass and sitting like a human being not a War Boy ready to go boom—those were Toast’s words, good ones straight and solid that don’t worry about feelings and hurts; he likes Toast. “I can look at the engine,” Nux explains, happy to feel useful and move and not sit about wasting away with sleep. He wants to bounce and flail but holds the urges in, wrangles them into his chest where they speed up his heart to a frightening frenzy but at least he is still being like a human being. He grins wildly at Furious’s gaze in the mirror, follows it to where it flickers to the Wives as they sit up and look around. Capable’s shoulder bumps his still raised hand and he pulls it back to his chest as if he has been burned. Blood Bag grunts something and Nux wonders if he’s seen, if he knows, if he’s laughing at poor weak Nux who is so terrified of the thoughts of—he tries to think the word breeder and can’t, can’t swagger in his thoughts the way he could to other War Boys—Capable. “Let me look. I’ll look,” and he is climbing out as he says it. 

“No. Stay here.” 

There is a moment, brief, fleeting, just a spark within his skull that dies out before illuminating too much, where Nux does not think he will stop. This moment says: why? Why listen? Why stay? Why? But it is gone and wholly forgotten by the time he yanks himself back in, so quickly forgotten that he cannot understand the tension in the eyes that watch him. Furiosa breathes and everything picks up again and Nux is left sitting, wound up and waiting to spring into action with a War Boy’s readiness that he cannot shake off. “I’ll go look. You all just stay here,” Furiosa continues, popping the door opened stepping out in the sun. Nux frowns and tracks her movement, feels Capable’s eyes on him and works the frown up into a smile, sees the others’ faces and wonders to himself which expression is more horrible. He lets the smile fall, shoulders eyes and all of it going together so that he has wilted in his seat.

“You,” Blood Bag mutters and Nux looks up without much expectation that it is him the man is calling. He’s turned around in his seat, pointing a finger between Nux and the driver’s chair. He doesn’t need to gesture twice and Nux knows exactly the command that is not being voiced. He scrambles with some of his barely contained energy into the driver’s seat, sees the sisters spread out in the new space offered to them in the back, watches Blood Bag leave to join Furiosa in front of the engine. The place Nux most longs to be but behind the wheel isn’t bad, still good, still a place where he has value. He thinks of another place that he might have some sort of worth and can’t stop his eyes from floating up to the rearview to catch sight of Capable. She smiles at him and he beams, feeling light and good, for this split second of smiles in her eyes and lips and cheeks with his goggles in her hair and a steering wheel in his hands. 

“Oh my, don’t look. Private time for them,” The Dag giggles and the others laugh too and suddenly Nux’s face is hot and he looks away at the hood of the rig that is obstructing his view. But he wonders if that makes Capable think that he is embarrassed to have smiled at her and that is such a rotten idea that he looks back up, quick and nervous that she’ll think poor, bad thoughts about him. Capable isn’t looking at him in the mirror anymore she is climbing over into the seat that Blood Bag usually has. He smiles again when she has settled, sitting on her knees and facing him, and he tries not to think of what his smile looks like because Capable seems to like him smiling so that must mean something right. 

He can hear Blood Bag and Furiosa banging around with the engine. The noise is pleasure and pain for him and he feels the surging frantic energy curling in him so he casts out for something to distract him. His hands itching for the engine, for tools, oil, blood, war! Boys and glory to Valhalla chrome and fire death! By the Immorten! Witness! He looks away into the desert guilty at the things he cannot purge from his mind. Always he will think these things. Always he will be this way. Ugly, wrong, and waiting simply to gutter out and die. No! He should not think that way! Capable says he is more and good and helping them. He rubs his palms on his pants, scratchy hands desperate for something to do and hold and work with. He looks over when Capable adjusts her position, his body so attuned the her movements that it feels like wire around his neck pulling him always to see what she is doing, that she is fine and safe and happy. She leans against the door, her feet near the gear shift between them. Nux blinks. 

“Here,” he says with this half-formed idea buzzing in his skull so that his mouth tastes like licking a spark plug. He pats his thigh with one and the other pulls gently, gently at her boot. She puts her feet lightly against where he has indicated though her eyebrow is raised slightly in question. He takes off one of her boots and then the other, puts one foot delicately against him and holds the other in his hands. He presses into the pads of her foot with his thumbs, rubs downward into the instep and back up again. He grins when she makes a noise of pleasure like the sound “oh”, surprised by this good feeling that he is able to produce. He holds her ankle, massages her calf, feels giddy as she falls further into her prone position, toes of her other foot curling in the fabric of his pants. 

There are eyes on him from the back seat, wide and staring and curious. Nervous, maybe, or is that just how he feels? He kisses her foot, gentle style so that his barely brush her skin so that he knows that he is so grateful, hardly worthy even for this action of allowing him to rub the tiredness of her feet. She sits up when he goes to rub the other foot, plants her feet firmly so he cannot lift them—he could, he knows, but he would never—and instead forces his hands into hers. He swallows at the contact, thick and dry and loud enough that he is certain the others have heard him. He twitches a shoulder up, self-conscious of Larry and Barry for sudden and no reason. Capable is not looking at them but his hands, studying them as if there were some sort of wonder in the scarred and calloused digits. 

“You have lovely hands, Nux,” she says low and breathy. There is a hot, wet thrill through his body at the sound. He sits straighter, staring at her staring at him. He cannot breath but what does that matter here, now with Capable looking at his hands as if they are more than just tools of a black thumb and mediocre ones at that. She rubs her thumb over a thick, tangled scar across his right middle finger. It is knotted and fierce.

“Got it caught in ring of barbed wire trying to take something that wasn’t mine. Nearly lost it,” he laughs. Capable’s eyes do not drift up to him like they thought he might and realizes he is uncomfortable under this intense scrutiny. His hands are filled with details to a life that he does not want and that does not want him. He opens his mouth to say something else but then Capable has pressed her lips against this scar, pressed them sloppy and he can feel the tender inside of her mouth for just a moment and his whole body shudders towards that feeling. “I, uh,” he tries to continue now as she moves her attention to the other scars, each one some hurt that he deserved. Each one from reaching or wanting or trying take more than he deserved because he was always so low and little and not very deserving of much. Not Capable. No, certainly not Capable and he has the insight enough to wonder what scar this wanting will leave on him. He does not think hard on that because that is foresight and that is not something a War Boy knows to use. Instead he whimpers because there is a divot of torn flesh from the pad of his thumb and Capable is worrying it with teeth and tongue. 

“Lovely hands.” Her breath is cool and hot on his fingers from her kisses. He sees Cheedo peering owlishly over at them, sees one of her eyes wide and staring, and he pulls back his hands and holds them trembling and reverently to his chest. 

”They aren’t that. Aren’t lovely, just mangled like the rest of me,” he insists. 

“Nux,” Capable says, pulling her feet from his thigh and replacing them with her hands, “don’t you think you’re handsome?” He laughs straight away, loud and harsh and barking. Because this is a good joke on Capable’s part, oh yes, so good. Slit would laugh. The boys all would because what a joke and it only works to be said from Capable because who else would he care about being handsome for? “I’m not joking, Nux, don’t laugh.” She is crawling over into his lap and soon the seat is full of her and his eyes dart looking to make sure there are not knives or guns or something that Furiousa has hidden that might cause Capable harm. He presses himself back to give her room, puts his hands on her hips in the barest of touches because he wants to balance her but does not want to take advantage. 

“Handsome,” he tries the word out on his mouth and can’t get the feel of it. “No, not me. War Boys aren’t handsome. Fearsome, yeah that.” She leans in and her eyelashes trace up and down on his cheek as she rubs her nose against the upraised scars along his lips. He darts his tongue out nervously and catches the bridge of her nose with it, tastes the lightness of the salt in her sweat. He mumbles something unintelligible, maybe an apology, maybe a plea. He can’t tell. He doesn’t know. 

“You are handsome, Nux. I think you’re so handsome and good and lovely.” Each word hits him like something hot and heavy and his chest constricts and his eyes burn and he feels so, so, so something that it makes him want to cry. Capable’s hands are on the buckles of his pants and he snaps his head to the side to see if the sisters are watching. He does not want Capable to humiliate herself in front of them by being seen with him in her, filling her with whatever sickness hunts his blood. “Don’t look at them look at me.” She nuzzles into his neck, kissing Larry and Barry until they kick up hard in his throat and he can’t breathe but he doesn’t care and they are not all fangs and venom but seem to be made of air and oh, he cannot breathe but at least he doesn’t hurt. 

He lifts his hips instinctually when he feels her tugging down his pants. She pulls them to his knees and then suddenly she is off of his lap and he blinks dumbly, finding her beneath the wheel and between his legs. She looks up at him sly and shining and he does not know what to think so he doesn’t think and just runs his fingers through her hair. He cannot read Capable the way she reads him because she is smart and good and a full-life woman. So he does not anticipate what she does, does not even know that this is a thing people do, does not even care that the sisters are right behind them maybe watching but maybe not, because Capable has her mouth on him and this is new and good and everything new has been good and why was there ever old if new is new and this is new. 

He pulls his hands from her hair because he wants to grip and tug but will not, NO, he will not pull her hair. He covers his face, pants into his hands, smells her mouth on his fingers and has to throw them out away because it is too much all at once to have there and still smell her so close. 

His skin is doused in guzzoline and her mouth is a flame, licking him and taking him away from the rig and the desert and the War Party on their heels to a place of light and shining chrome feelings in him that he didn’t know where there. And everything is quiet. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe he is gasping, panting, moaning. “Yes, Capable, Valhalla, oh Capable, I am rust and waste and—“ He is rambling madly, his mind caught between the ecstasy of the road and battle and that of Capable and this feeling.

“No, Nux, you’re so wonderful and strong and feel so, so good when you touch me,” she corrects him and he knows he must agree with her because how can he argue with her when she is doing this, this, this glorious thing to him. 

“I am, I am,” he stutters, hips jerking. 

“You are chrome,” she tells him and he nods, desperately, blindly, feeling it now maybe in this moment maybe understanding maybe because if anything is chrome it is the way his body feels now connected with Capable. He throws his hands to the steering wheel and grips it tightly, eyes darting and teeth grinding, and he hears Blood Bag banging on the side of the rig because he was here for a reason and this, what is happening, was not the reason. 

”Yes, Yes,” he calls as throws down his foot on the gas, feeling like his body is tumbling over and over and his skin is replaced by fire and he looks down and sees Capable looking at him while she does a thing, a thing with tongue and lips and wet, hot Capable. “I am chrome!” He grunts and his eyes roll back when he sees Capable smile around him. “Witness me! Witness me! I am chrome!”

The engine revs strong and loud and powerful.

Nux’s hips lift off the seat, Capable straining around him. 

Behind him one of the Wives gasp. 

Then everything stills. He sits in the seat, gripping the steering wheel as if it is the only thing keeping him from falling over. Capable pulls herself up and onto his lap again. She grinning wild and wicked, a War Boy grin as he finds his way to Valhalla and such a look, on Capable, after that… Nux lifts a hand and brushes away the hair that has fallen in her face. “You…” he pants. She puts her arms around his neck and kisses him open, peels back his teeth with her tongue and there is taste in her mouth he does not recognize but knows must be the taste of him. He does not like it except that it is from Capable so he likes it anyway. One of the Wives makes a hooting sound. He thinks The Dag but his eyes are glued on Capable’s face as they kiss, the look of something frenzied and mad still there and oh how it makes him feel close to her.

“You,” she says when they have parted, “are very, very shiny.”


End file.
